Three Worlds
by EllieF
Summary: He has passed through the gate before. She has never forgotten Aslan's warning. Two young people who have seen other worlds find themselves in danger in the years before WWII. Chronicles of Narnia x FMA crossover.
1. The Light

Notes: AU for Chronicles of Narnia and Fullmetal Alchemist, though I think the _Magician's Nephew_ timeline is sufficiently vague that I'm not outright spitting on it. :-) It starts right after the FMA anime series, before the movie canonically starts. Part 1 of I don't know yet. Polly/Edward if you want to see it, maybe less subtly later if it works out that way.

_...very soon, before you are an old man and an old woman, great nations in your world will be ruled by tyrants who care no more for joy and justice and mercy than the Empress Jadis._

That light—only once before had she seen anything like it.

And even that had not really been like this, this blazing column of violet stabbing up into the clouds.

_It's from another world_, Polly thought, and before she knew it, she was running towards it.

Too late. The light shrank and dimmed, and just as Polly reached it, vanished. She had reached a blind alley, dark, the ground wet with the recent rain. She began to turn to go, but a motion caught her eye, a shifting shadow, maybe.

"Hello?" she called.

No answer.

She went closer slowly.

The shadow moved again, and Polly saw that it was actually a young man struggling to lift himself from the ground.

She hurried the last few steps, calling, "Are you all—"

And stopped short. His hand, propping him up on the cobblestones, wasn't a hand at all, but some sort of machine.

He lifted his head and looked at Polly through his bedraggled pale hair. His face was dirty, his eyes a strange gold.

She took a deep breath and knelt beside him. "Are you all right? Can I help?"

"Where am I?" he said. His accent wasn't English.

"Islington," Polly said. It didn't seem to mean anything to him. "In London," she added.

He sat up and pushed his hair out of his face. Polly tried not to stare at his mechanical arm, but it was difficult to know where to look, because she saw now that he was wearing nothing but trousers considerably the worse for the wear, and that his left leg was metal too.

She felt herself blushing, and stood and pulled off her coat perhaps a bit more forcefully than she might otherwise have done. "Here, have this. You must be cold."

He took it and got slowly to his feet. Polly turned away for a moment while he put it on.

"My name's Polly. Polly Plummer," she said, looking back at him.

"I'm Edward Elric."

"Pleased to meet you," she said, since he seemed to expect some sort of reaction. She was a little surprised to see how slight he was, some centimetres shorter than she.

She wanted to ask him about the light straight away, but he was still shivering despite the wool coat. "I don't live far from here," she said. "You can come along with me and at least warm up."

"All right. Thanks."

He seemed a bit steadier now, but as they walked Polly noticed him lifting his hand and flexing the metal fingers. She bit her lip and looked down at the ground. There were so many things tumbling about in her mind that she couldn't sort them out. She didn't think he had come from Narnia. But to meet someone else who had travelled between worlds...it made her almost giddy with excitement and curiosity. Maybe he would trust her enough to tell her his story.


	2. Two Worlds

Polly had never tried to find her way back to Narnia; she felt certain that she was not meant to. She thought of it often, though, and wondered what it was like now. There, she had felt that everything happened for a reason, and that it would all make sense and come out right in the end. As she grew older, she felt that way less and less in her own world.

She'd been just a child during the Great War, but she knew it had broken the world in some way she didn't fully understand, but could feel. She saw sadness and suffering every day. And she felt that she was always looking for a peace she would never again find.

Edward was quiet during the short walk to her house, and Polly kept her silence too. She didn't know where Edward had come from, but surely the journey had been trying enough.

She still lived in the row of houses where she'd first met Digory years ago. Her father had been wounded in France, and they'd moved to the countryside after the war, but Polly had hated being away from London, so she'd come back when she was old enough. She taught grammar to first-years at a small public school nearby.

"Here," she said as they reached the house, and Edward nodded in acknowledgment.

She took him into the kitchen and put the kettle on for tea. "Have a seat," she said. "I think I have some clothes that will fit you."

He seemed numb. His torn clothes, the passage between worlds... His wounds weren't new, clearly, but God only knew what else he'd been through on the other side.

She looked quickly through her father's old clothes and pulled some out. After a moment's thought, she went to her own room and picked up the basin and jug and a washcloth.

When she got back downstairs, her strange guest was asleep facedown on the table, head cradled on his good arm, hair spilling everywhere, longer than Polly had noticed before.

"Er, Mr. Elric?" she said, quietly, and then felt silly because he couldn't have been more than about sixteen. The dark smudges under his eyes were from exhaustion, not dirt, but she could hardly just let him sleep in this state. "Edward?"

He stirred, lifted his head, blinked at her. "Sorry," he said. "It's been a rough day. I'm pretty sure I spent some of it dead."

Polly didn't know what to say. She believed him. "I." She stopped, tried to remember to breathe. "I brought you these, and, er. Thought you might want to clean up. The water closet's through there."

"Thanks."

The water was ready for the tea, and Polly busied herself about the kitchen while Edward was gone.

By the time he came back she'd set out two cups of tea and added lemon to hers. He'd pulled his hair back, but he was still barefoot, and Polly had to smile at the contrast with the refined, if slightly too-big, clothes.

"Would you like anything in your tea?"

"No thanks."

He sat down across from her, and she tried to think how to begin.

"You're from... somewhere else. Aren't you?" she said.

"How do you know that?"

"I know about some strange things," she said. Her heart pounded an erratic rhythm; she'd never told anyone about it. "I've been to another world."

His eyes went huge. "You... Who the hell are you?"

"I'm not anybody," Polly said. "What's your world like? You didn't come from Narnia." She was sure of it now.

The anger drained out of his face, and he suddenly looked even younger than she'd first guessed he was. "There are only two worlds."

"But— I saw the way into many in the Wood between the Worlds."

"The... You _have_ seen some strange things." He didn't look tired at all now. "Going through without the gate?" he added softly, almost to himself.

"The gate?" she said.

"It's how I came through," Edward said. He drained the teacup and eyed the lemon slice on Polly's plate as if thinking about trying it.

"Would you like a scone?" Polly said.

"Oh, yes, please."

She got the plate out and Edward reached for one with ill-disguised eagerness.

"You came through a... gate?" Polly said.

"Mm-hmm," he said around a large bite. "I'd been here before, but not exactly like this." He held up the metal hand for a moment, and she wasn't sure what he was getting at, but let him go on. "The gate opens using alchemy. I know it doesn't work here, but in my world, alchemy developed instead of science."

"Alchemy? Turning lead into gold?"

Edward smiled. "There's a little more to it than that, but that's the basic idea, yeah." He took another scone. "How did you cross over?"

"Er... magic rings," she said, a bit embarrassed at how absurd it sounded out loud.

"Hey, alchemy seems like magic to people here. But you said something about a wood too?"

Polly nodded. "The rings take you to the Wood. There are pools everywhere there, and each one leads to another world. But..." She repressed a shudder at the memory of Charn. "Some of them aren't very nice."

"But some of them are?" Edward said.

"Oh, yes. One is very nice."

Edward started to take another scone, but yawned hugely.

Polly knew it was hardly proper to invite him to stay, but she wanted to continue their conversation and felt acutely aware that she was probably being a bad hostess. Edward looked so pale and exhausted. She made up her mind. "I have a guest room, if you'd like a place to sleep."

* * *

Ed punched the pillow for probably the twentieth time, but it still wasn't comfortable enough to quiet his stupid mind's babbling.

He'd crossed over for good this time, body and soul, not like before when he'd dropped into that other Edward's body. He didn't want to think about what could've happened to the other version of himself.

He kicked at the blankets, which were already a hopeless tangle.

At least Al was safe.

But thinking of his brother brought a dangerous prickling to Ed's eyes, and he squeezed them shut and struggled to quiet the roar of homesickness that suddenly made his heart feel hollow.

_He's all right_, he told himself. _Surely this price is high enough._


End file.
